8. Organise Work Spaces (Top Tips for Time Management)

Businesses can reduce time spent on performing tasks and improve productivity and efficiency by ensuring that general and individual employee work spaces are organised:

·         Identify all general and individual work spaces

·         Determine guidelines for organising the work spaces to be efficient, for example:

-          Ensure that all equipment are stored in the same place after being used

-          Ensure that equipment is easily accessible

-          Organise the work spaces to compliment the relevant processes and procedures

-          File all documents on a daily basis according to an agreed filing system

·         Train employees in these guidelines and ensure that they adhere to it

·         Review the guidelines on a regular basis to ensure that they are still relevant

Some advantages of organising the work space (apart from saving time) are:

·         Information or equipment/tools are easier to find by all employees

·         Reduced health and safety risk – employees are less likely to injure themselves

·         Better control and security over information, equipment or stock

·         It encourages employees to be more efficient which could increase productivity

·         It could reduce stress for employees

7. Streamline Processes and Procedures (Top Tips for Time Management)

Most businesses have routine tasks that need to be executed on a regular basis which take up a large portion of time spent by employees on business activities. Employees may not all use the same or most efficient methodology which could result in unnecessary time spent to complete these tasks. One way to get around this and to save time is to create formal business processes and procedures which all employees should follow:

·         Identify routine tasks or tasks that need to be performed on a regular sporadic basis

·         Determine what the most efficient processes and procedures are to perform these tasks which would take the least amount of time without compromising on the quality of work performed

·         Document these processes and procedures

·         Train all relevant employees in these processes and procedures

·         Test or revisit these processes and procedures on a regular basis to ensure that they are followed and to determine whether they can be improved to increase efficiency

Advantages of creating and streamlining processes and procedures are:

·         Saving time on routine tasks

·         Increased efficiency and productivity

·         Employees know what is expected of them and how to perform the tasks

·         Increased productivity when there is staff turnover – new employees are better informed and trained in how to perform their tasks

6. Monitor and Evaluate Progress (Top Tips for Time Management)

It is important to continuously monitor and evaluate the progress on tasks, deliverables and goals to determine whether they will be completed within their specified time frames. This enables a business or employer to:

·         Identify important tasks which are unaddressed or slow in progress and approaching their deadlines which can be rescheduled or increased in level of urgency and priority

·         Identify low or no priority tasks which are taking up more than their scheduled time which can be delegated or investigated to determine how they can be reduced in frequency or eliminated

·         Determine whether deliverables and goals will be achieved within their specified time frames or whether these time frames need to be amended

There are various ways of monitoring and evaluating the progress on tasks, deliverables and goals. It is recommended that a business determines and implements a methodology that is practical and best suited to their business or industry. Here are a few examples:

·         Create dashboards or scorecards

·         Regular progress meetings

·         % completion method for each task/deliverable/goal